Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Why are DPS Players so Bad?

One of the largest problems in early TBC raiding is DPS players. Quite frankly, most DPS players don't seem to know how to do acceptable amounts of damage.

This wasn't an issue in pre-TBC raiding because the early WoW 1.0 raid DPS requirements were abysmally low. It wasn't until you got to AQ40 that DPS had to start performing anywhere near their full potential.

Let's take Gruul the Dragonkiller. If your DPS does an average of 500 DPS, you are looking at a growth 16 kill. If your DPS does an average of 600 DPS, you're looking at a growth 12 kill. Is asking for 500-600 DPS really too much for your DPS players?

If you look at the WoW Raid & Dungeons forums, you'll see a lot of newer guilds posting WoW Web Stats logs, and asking for help. And time and time again, you'll see the response focusing on the DPS players and how they are underperforming. People not packing enough +hit, using a bad spell rotation, using direct damage instead of DoTs.

If it was just a couple of people with problems, we could say that it was an issue with the player. But the scope of the problem is so large that I think it points to systemic faults in WoW.

DPS players have never had to reach 500 DPS before in the game. All solo mobs and quests are killable with much lower DPS. And it has to be this way, otherwise paladins or other low-DPS characters would never be able to kill anything. So for a DPS player, solo mobs die so fast that there is no need to tune her damage to the higher output.

Boss fights are also much longer than regular fights, and that means that Damage-Over-Time effects become more powerful than Direct Damage. A very common mistake is to see rogues using Eviscerate instead of Rupture. But this makes sense in regular play. Most mobs don't survive long enough for Rupture to finish. Instead, using Eviscerate to kill the mob faster is the way to go. The problem is that the rules change when it comes to boss mobs.

Another common mistake is not packing enough hit rating. There's a large jump in misses between level 72 and 73 mobs, especially for spells. Players who don't know about that jump often don't pack enough hit rating. They go for stats like crit, which have proved more useful in regular play.

The other major problem for DPS players is that they don't have enough feedback. They're just pouring damage into a central pool, and it is really hard to tell if your individual contribution is enough. In contrast, healers get immediate feedback. If a healer doesn't heal competently, people die. This forces healers to improve at a much faster rate. Similarly for tanks, if a mob gets away, or if DPS is consistently pulling off the tank, the tank knows she needs to improve.

So far, the common theme is that regular play, including 5-man instancing, does not prepare DPS players for raid boss fights. And when you combine that with the lack of feedback during boss fights, it's no wonder that DPS players are having problems, especially when first getting into raiding.

The only real way to improve DPS players currently is out-of-game research and theorycrafting. It would be better if there was a more organic, in-game way, to prepare DPS for raiding.

28 comments:

Ideally everyone would go to EJ every day and check upon all the theorycrafting regarding their class. In practice it usually ends up falling to the officers and class leaders of a guild to know this information and communicate it to the other members. Thanks in large part to the Armory it is much easier for raid leaders to know exactly what members are lacking in and to correct the problem.

I personally have actually seen a great improvement in the quality of dps players and especially gear since TBC came out. For one, the drops from 5-mans and heroics come with the stats that dps players need for endgame. Unlike the drops from instances like Scholomance and Stratholme (which were mainly just +agi/str/int) we are now getting drops with things like spell hit and melee hit rating from easy 5-mans. Another big contribution to this area is from jewelcrafting. Back in vanilia if you didn't have enough hit it was SOL. Nowadays if you're running low on spell hit you can swap out those +12 damage gems for +8 spell hit.

I think blizzard has done much better in regards to getting people gear they need for raiding. Now it is just the responsibility of getting those players the information that they need to do their job well.

The problem with DPS is not necessarily "lack of training" but rather lack of commitment on the part of most dps, and healers for that matter.

The general path of progression should be level 70 5-mans->Heroics->Karazan-> Gruul, and so on.

But quite simply, most raiders do not devote the time necessary to skill themselves up by facing difficult 5-man content before doing raids.

With karazhan nerfed several months ago, karazhan is actually easier than most heroics now so its not as good for training people for hard raid encounters in SSC and beyond.

I think it was a big mistake to remove the trials of naaru requirement from SSC and The Eye attunement. That was a significant barrier that made sure only capable people were going to do SSC and The Eye. My old guild barely had gruul and mag on farm status before setting off to do SSC after the attunement quests were removed. Only about 5 people had done the trials of naaru quests.

Over the last 3 months they have downed about 3 raid bosses since then, an absurdly slow rate of progression IMO and one due to the fact that there was not enough time devoted to skilling people up.

And I beg to differ that gear matters that much.

As a healer, the difference in gear between tiers can easily be made up by chain drinking mana pots and demonic runestones.

Gruul has very easily accessible elixirs that are worth a tier in gear level.

The fact is that most players simply suck.

Rogues are supposedly the best sustained DPS in the game but in almost all 5-mans/heroics you never see most rogues do a lot of damage. Only the top raiding guilds have the rogues that can do 1000 dps, every other rogue only does around 300-400 in instances and bosses. True, having top-tier weapons are more important to rogues than other classes but the simpel truth is most people suck at the game and don't do even 60% of the damage they could do with their gear.

Its just the demographics of WOW. Most people that play it are dumb and not from the upper classes of professionals that understand how important research and accountability are.

In my experience, most DPS are trying to do a good job. But they're flying blind. They lack that feedback loop which makes improvement possible.

They try to take techniques that have worked for them in other areas of the game, and apply it in raiding. And that doesn't really work so well, and they aren't sure why it doesn't work.

Most people aren't theorycrafters, aren't able to see the implications from the math. They learn by doing, by trying new things and judging which is more effective. They need the feedback cycle to become better.

flying blind? maybe, but personally, i've met tons of these so called "flying blind" players, who dont theorycraft, but also wont take suggestions.pure stubbordness, yes, but its true, try to tell a raiding frost mage that fire outdps's him? wont work, because he wont agree with you, and there aint much you can do about that...

i think a good way to add feedback to the DPSers would be to imput a DPS meter into the game, so that everyone has them, and everyone sees them, if you're a DPS class (not hybrid) and you're always last on DPS... gotta be something wrong, no?

I'd claim that DPSers do get feedback, although that requires the use of the dreaded damage meter.

Knowing the formulas behind hit and crit ratings helps, but looking at a decent damage meter (such as Recap, Recount, SWStats or Damagemeters) will give you decent feedback, sometimes even real-time. You can see your overall damage, sustained and burst DPS as well as your damage by skill/spell. In addition, the damage meter shows how your teammates are performing. If you're getting outdamaged by your teammate in inferior (in regards to item level) gear, you are doing something wrong. In this sense, competition is good. It drives you to improve yourself.

Of course, you can only use this method if you're raiding regularly and fighting bosses that don't oneshot your tank randomly. If you're not, your only real option is Dr. Boom, but he has one large flaw: He's not a level 73 mob. This makes hit rating increase your DPS less than it would in a real raid. But he does allow you to gauge both your burst and sustained DPS, allowing you to refine your spell/skill rotations and optimize your mana usage to maximize your total damage.

Oh, and when it comes to fire vs frost.. The problem (at least for me, a raid-only frost mage) is that I don't have Spellfire, which any decent Fire/Arcane mage would use anyway. Changing specializations and crafting, enchanting and socketing the new set is a major hurdle. This prevents me from evaluating my DPS potential accurately. I might be able to do more DPS if I respecced to fire, but I'm not spending 500-600 gold to find out.

And for the record, I do keep up with and even outDPS similarly-geared fire mages in my guild. ;-)

People have their own little specs and will stick by them. Even if they have some knowledge they will be trying to make the most of a bad spec rather then start afresh.

We have been running alt kara recently and I ran a wws. The alts in all cases did twice or more dps as the casual mains who also attended, indeed the Kitty druid main who managed 200 dps on curator in comparison to the mage alt who had hit 70 2 weeks before and got 600 dps just wanted to make me cry.

Anonymous>> I think it could be taken as fact now that a Shattered halls Heroic is harder then Void reaver.

I think the title of this post is misleading. The post itself says the problem isn't the players, it is the system. Please change the title :)

Also, the entire post talks about raid DPS in SSC, TK and above. You realize this is applicable to less than 20% of the player population? (checkout wowjutsu if you don't believe me). DPS are doing just fine in everything up to Gruul, including Heroics - no need to rag on them.

Gruul and Void Reaver both have massive DPS requirements yet include many effects that make it hard for DPS to nuke continuously. As the post says, heavy use of DoTs is a must but mages, hunters and shamans and to a large extent rogues simply don't have DoTs. As a mge I do the best DPS I can but fight mechanics mean that Warlocks will always out-DPS me in the VR fight due to their DoTs. You can clame all you want it's my fault or that I somehow am doing something wrong, but I know the truth :)

Every boss mob, including Kara and Heroics, is for all intents and purposes a level 73 elite mob. That means in order for a melee dps to hit the boss consistantly (1% miss chance) they need 8-9% melee hit for special attacks and 2 handed weapons or 27-28% hit chance while duel wielding (I give ranges because Blizzard still has yet to confirm what the true miss values for bosses are, and different tests yield different results). Spellcasters on the other hand need a flat 16% spell hit in order to reach the resist cap (1% chance to resist fully, partial resists are not affected). I'm not exactly sure but I believe the hit cap for ranged weapons is the same as 2 handers. Hit rating needs to be the first thing any dps is stacking. By reaching the hit rating cap you will see a remarkable increase across the board in dps. This is especially important for spellcasters, as a full resist costs full mana, so being hit capped also increases your dpm by quite a large amount.

After you have reached the hit cap most players look for crit. This is by no means bad, as long as dps players understand that crit only helps overall dps to a certain extent. For example, a ret pally with more than 27% chance to crit is basically wasting points, as after that point he reaches 100% Vengance uptime and Attack Power and Haste rating become better for his sustained dps. The problem is that most people don't understand this, and you end up seeing mages with 40% crit chance but only 600 spell damage.

From there it becomes a matter of learning the most efficient shot/cast/move rotation for your class and making sure your spec makes good sense raid wise (PvP talents are great for PvP, but they really have no place in endgame raiding).

That is why people need to take initiative and look up the current theorycrafting regarding their class and spec. If someone honestly doesn't know that his Sinister Strike will only miss 1% of the time if he gets 9% hit then he needs to be informed one way or the other. WWS is a great tool for newer guilds; after a successful boss kill post a WWS of the fight so that everyone can see exactly what they are lacking on. Running Sw_Stats or Recount (or to a lesser extent DamageMeters, though it doesn't have anywhere near the options of the first two) can also help greatly. But again most players aren't going to take the time to read EJ every day, so it falls to the class leaders and officers of a guild to make sure that everyone knows the class mechanics.

This does have a huge application before TK/SSC. Bosses everywhere are level 73, not to mention Kara/Gruul/Mag are the training grounds for these harder instances. Your dps may be fine in Kara, but if they work on improving not only will it help you clear Kara faster but it will make fights like Gruul easier for everyone.

DPSing is not an easy job. There are no easy jobs in endgame raiding. Everyone needs to do their part and do that part to the maximum extent possible.

Interesting discussion. Sorry in advance that I'm so long-winded... :)

I'm running into these questions myself as our guild sets up for its first Kara run.

I've done research and my shadow priest is trying to increase +spell damage and/or +shadow damage. Yes, the research was necessary to learn that a shadow priest in raiding is essentially a DOT-er, with VE, SW:P, and Mind Flay as mainstays while working in Mind Blast and SW:D. Since Shadow Priests are so DOT-heavy, and DOTs don’t crit, then +spell crit fell off my priority list.

I chose to change professions at level 70 to get Shadow Tailoring for the Frozen Shadoweave set, and also have farmed the mats for other good +spell damage tailoring items (such Bracers of Havoc and Cloak of the Black Void), and I'm also working on the mats for enchants (leveling up an alt to level 35 to D/E items). Finally, I've run enough old-school PvP to fill in some other gaps like an epic ring and a +12 spell damage gem (and some +stamina from PvP items helps survivability). I've shelled out the dough for many a Living Ruby for +9 spell damage. And many slots are filled with rares that give weaker overall stats than epics, but better +spell damage. Not sure I'm willing to do the time for the Arena Spellblade though...

But none of the other priests in the guild come close to my +shadow damage, and discussing spec can be kind of like discussing politics or religion. I'm not sure how to approach that, exactly, when people seem to range from the opinion that you get a key and go to Kara to the opinion that you gear up in Heroics for a time before setting foot in Kara -- but "gear up" needs to be directed, or you're not necessarily making progress in the right direction.

Tools? My main tool is the Internet, ranging from WoW forums and blogs to the Armory to sites like Thottbot and Allakhazam. The flexibility of WoW - "Which item is better for me?" - is both a strong and weak point of WoW. The tools are out there, but I agree that they are not evenly accessible, and that your choices will vary based on PvE solo, instance, heroic, and raid content, or PvP in its various flavors. You need a good source of information - a guild, a website, maybe even the General channel - with the catch being that if you don't know and someone else who is clueless (but thinks they know something) is your advisor, you can head down the wrong track.

But at this point I don't think I would agree with the premise that a high DPS requirement in raiding is a bad game design. I think that the assumption - correct or not - is that endgame raiders are the cream of the crop, at least in terms of organization and information. When you're talking about endgame raiding, the silent assumption in TBC is that you're not in easy mode anymore. Pre-TBC raiding was, from accounts I've read, pretty much a matter of organization, and there was a lot of room for dead weight. But in TBC, by all accounts I've read, there is no longer any easy-mode raiding. I would say that's a good game design - but probably is a painful surprise to pre-TBC raiders, while a person in a TBC raid with no old-WoW raiding experience more-than-likely *expects* it to be a hard road to the top.

I've seen some incredibly terrible everything while pugging. Regularly.

We seem to be having some issues with tanking Al'ar and Hydross, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that tanks are generally tunnel visioned and stationary. It's a new challenge.

We wipe all the time from tanks dropping, I assume because of a mis-timed or poor choice of heal or two, but the healers are hardly incompetent and inadequately trained from earlier content. Things get in the way of normal healing.

Perhaps the DPS classes are overcompensating on Gruul and VR right now. In Gruul's case, leaving too early is better than being tossed. In VR's case, folk will learn not to run as far when they get used to the range on the Arcane balls. It's a matter of balancing solid DPS and making sure we stay alive to do DPS in the first place.

I bet if you started assigning people from the whole WoW player base to a scale you'd see a curve similar to post secondary grades. You'll have a few on top shining above the rest, a bunch in the middle doing so-so, and a few bottom feeders.

Or liken it to financial status.. few really rich, majority in the middle, and few on the streets.

You can't expect everyone in WoW to be an elite gamer while the rest are in EQ/UO/etc. Nor the split to be Raiders=Elite, Casuals=Normal, Kids=Inept.

Enough info is available for any class/spec in the game to improve themselves. It's the people that make use of it or don't. Can make use of it or can't. Care enough to push themselves and carry their weight in a group or choose to just be in the group to see content/socialize and let others do the work.

Tanks and Healers have to do plenty of out of game research and theory crafting too if they want to be on top of their game. It's no different. Look at the thought that goes into your healing macros. How do any of the 5-toon instances prepare tanks for the positioning in Al'ar? Or the transitions and add-collapsing for Hydross? Or suggest effective healing/tanking macros?

Just because someone is in a raiding guild doesn't mean they're going to be in the upper class of elite gamers. Some just like to socialize and see stuff they can't get to on their own. Some are undoubtedly better suited for casual play but are dragged into a raiding guild by friends who are good raiders.

You have to expect a curve of abilities in a guild as much as across the whole of the WoW player base as in anything else in which people involve themselves in RL.

People's behaviour/abilities aside, not all fights are equally suited to the array of classes/specs. Movement, self-healing, 'unlucky'/unfortunate damage (chained cave-ins or multiple arcane balls), resists, etc, all hamper a player's ability to function at their theoretical best. Whether it be DPSing, tanking, or healing.

It just happens that Gruul and VR are very hard on DPS classes. In Gruul's case, we need to err on caution to avoid being tossed and wiping the raid. I'll spend a half-dozen seconds doing squat waiting for the toss to finally happen but you can rest assured I won't kill anybody with a shatter.

In VR's case, there's often more time spent moving instead of DPSing; this could be solvable by spreading out better and returning to our own spots, but you can't pin that on the DPS classes.

In both cases, DPS are on their own for heals and 8s bandages between running in and out of danger is a big loss in DPS.

Finally, as you said, we need to average 5-600 DPS to drop Gruul in 12 growths. That means a majority in the 5-600 DPS range, some approaching 800+, and some approaching or below 300 DPS. And I think our raids have been pretty well balanced in that respect.

What a complete troll post. You basically presume dps players are unskilled on the average, without having significant 1st hand experience playing as a dps. The +hit and spell rotation comments are just basic tactics anyone can read in a forum, though they are valid.

Of course just standing around as a dps turret, a high output is easy. But what you do not understand since you do not have experience playing dps in difficult fights, is that very few boss fights are like that anymore.

DPS is now a game of juggling boss fight tasks, movement, threat management, mana/energy/rage efficiency, group awareness, and also damage output. To imply that DPS is bad at this while only really pointing to the DPS part of the pie shows you ignorance and inexperience in that role.

It would be like a mage who never played a tank making a topic "why are tanks so bad at threat generation", and then proceeding to bitch that they are always threat capped. Boo hoo.

"Its just the demographics of WOW. Most people that play it are dumb and not from the upper classes of professionals that understand how important research and accountability are."

#1 it is a GAME

#2 not everyone takes it as seriously as you.

#3 you want to give your guild applicants a mensa test before they join?..

Let's look at the pally I pugged with a few nights ago. Holy spec. Not ONE piece of plate! 30% cloth, 30%leather, and 30% mail, and some sockets not filled. Caused at least one wipe because he ran around like a little priesty crying 'get this mob off of me!'

What was the quote? Tanking is a responsibility, Healing is a job, and DPS is a game. That's my belief on DPS in WOW. While I have met some really good DPS most of them are on the slow end of the learning curve. A tank has to be on the forefront because if he goes down everyone else goes down. Healers have to be on top of their game as well because without heals the tank is going down in a very quick manner. The DPS meanwhile just sit around and pew pew things. It's not as obvious(most of the time) if they're slacking and therefore not brought up as much as a bad tank or a bad healer.

And to the above anonymous poster, having to worry about positioning, threat management, and mana/rage mangagement is a sorry excuse for your DPS not being where it is. Learn to multi-task and quit giving excuses. I don't make excuses when I have to reposition a boss or with my mana management. I agree with Coriel on this that DPS needs to learn how to play.

And to Karl, crappy tanks and healers tend to get weeded out earlier because it is very obvious when they aren't doing their jobs.

It used to be true that DPS could be dumbasses and sit there and pew pew. It's no longer true. Fight's like the Curator and many others are DPS skill checks. Moving and all the other tasks while managing good DPS is just as hard as tanking an healing.

Most fights a tank just sits in one spot going through thier known rotations. Healers play whack a mole. These don't take any more skill than DPS.

"Moving and all the other tasks while managing good DPS is just as hard as tanking an healing."

"Most fights a tank just sits in one spot going through their known rotations. Healers play whack a mole. These don't take any more skill than DPS. "

I think you missed the point of Coriel's post...

The heart of what Coriel pointed out was that DPS does NOT have a skill check until the bosses in end game. There is no way to prepare them for things and thus they are usually found to be lacking when the skill check happens.

It's NOT easy to generate really good DPS, and its particularly not easy to generate it against raid bosses. In that, you're in agreance with the post...

Consider what a tank sees with trash mobs, or in pre-raid instances. The tank has to develop an effective rotation to develop threat. If the rotation is not effective, there will not be enough threat generated and people will die. This rotation will work just as well in raids. Very little changes for the tank when moving on to this new content.

Whereas for DPS, when suddenly faced with a mob with level > 72, a lot changes. The fight is longer so you have to know how to handle damage over time. The miss rate is higher, so you have to gear differently. There's more going on, so you have to do more random stuff while keeping your dps up...

So with all that extra crap involved in these raid boss skill checks, it is significantly harder to output good DPS. The problem is that you could use less than ideal abilities in pre-raid content and generate good enough dps. But once you get to raiding, you need to know how to get the max, and that's where a lot of DPS players fall short. Whereas (going back to the earlier example) the tank's threat generation is required to be at the same level no matter what content he faces. So moving to raid content is easier for the tank than for the DPS...

Which brings it all back to Coriel's fundamental point: there's probably a design flaw in the game regarding the transition to raid content for DPS.

Why does anyone here think they can demand someone to change their class for a very narrow minded goal?

Sure, players should think of playing for the team when they choose to do raiding, but is it really their fault Blizzard has shown an incompetence for doing anything other than upscale DPSing the raid bosses? Do more DPS is not progression.

You don't have to DPS at the same level that you do in the highest levels of raiding until you get there. Even once you start raiding, effective DPS on a boss is very different from what you need to do to get to the boss.

To help the party get to the boss, you are most useful putting out burst damage. Depending on where you are and what class you are playing you might also be doing a lot of crowd control. To do both well at the same time you really have to be on your toes, but that's a skill set that will have naturally evolved running five mans so most DPSers can make it look easy. In my experience it's is just as hard as tanking and a lot harder than healing.

Then, when you get to the a giant gnarly raid boss, suddenly it's all about maximum sustained DPS. Burst is irrelevant in most fights. That's a very different ability rotation for most classes/ specs. It's also often a different set of gear than what was good for the entire 70 previous levels of play.

I think someone already said something similar, but WoW being so friggin simple 90% of the time leads to never really preparing the player for the challengin content where armor/weaps/skill sets REALLY do matter.

The PvPers alreay know how important these items are, because they are constantly trying to be better then their counterparts. But since you can completly skip this aspect of the game, most of your players don't have a clue why +8 spell cast speed is better the +12 agility, or why a DoT is more effective then a large up front DD spell.

I blame WoW then. It tries so hard to appeal to the kiddies, and their grandparents, there is no true drive to prepare the player for raid content.

I still believe the one thing missing from making WoW 'the one ring to bind them' of MMOs is Realm vs Realm combat, not the Unreal Tournament style Battlegrounds that are currently in the game. If no one has a reason to take pride and improve their armor besides to best the next higher level PVE mob, then being unprepared for Raid content is here to stay for 99% of WoW players. Good luck guild leaders.

Another problem with DPS players training in regular instances is that not many tanks can hold up against a DPS player giveing her fullest. DPS players that try to squeeze max damage out of their mana/energy/rage will wipe most normal instance groups and almost always need to hold back. and the few tanks that can hold aggro against that get angry becouse it's 'to hard to hold aggro against that'. Mind that for instance a mage at full burn can make 1200 tps even with the 'subtlety' enchant without much efford against most tanks doing around 400 tps or less. That is not a healthy situation for normal instance groups.So when a DPS player is used to holding back she will have to flip a switch for raids to be effective against bosses like Void Reaver that are DPS races.

Pushing 2k DPS prior to T6 content is just burst damage, even with the welfare epics i've yet to see anyone get near it. The closest i've seen is a destruction lock friend of mine doing 1600 dps on alar and solarian. Straight Shadow Bolt spam. As a DPS/Healer (elemental shaman, fills in as resto as needed), I will definitely agree that DPS is stupid. While this is my second elemental shaman, at lvl 69 i was in a gruuls run. I was doing 650-700 dps during the DPS phases. People who cant manage that in their mainspec at lvl 70 with epics need to re-evaluate their approach to the game.

Wow certainly is a game, but its a game of skill, and a team game as well. I hate it when only 1/3rd of your team is doing their job and struggling to make up for the other 2/3rds trying to ride the gravy train. As I write this, my shaman is just over 1.1k spell dmg unbuffed, hitcapped, and 35% spellcrit. Yes, unbuffed. Most of my gear is from LW and badges, a couple from heroics, and one piece from karazhan. I'm not saying this to brag, but when I can spam one button (lightning bolt, which isnt even a great dps rotation, just mana efficient) and push 1200-1300 dmg on DPS burn fights like morogrim, alar, and anatheron, while a rogue wearing 4 pieces of T5 struggles to break 800 on the boss (without switching targets), its pathetic.

#3 you want to give your guild applicants a mensa test before they join?.."

Anon said:"Dude, when did you forget it was a *game*?"

Yes, it's a game. Play solo all you want and no one will care how much DPS you do.But as soon as you start doing things with other players, expect to be judged on your performance. Tanking and keep losing aggro on the boss? Punt. Healing and keep losing the tank? Punt. And yep, DPS and fail to actually put out any decent DPS (you know, the thing you're *supposed* to be focused on doing with that character)? Punt.

No one can impose performance levels on you, unless you expect to join a group of people who want to succeed in beating some of the toughest challenges the game has to offer. At that point you shouldn't be surprised at being asked to live up to some kind of performance measure, you should expect it.

But I agree with the OP on the feedback issue. A tank knows if she loses aggro on the Boss. A Healer knows if he isn't able to keep the tank alive. But the DPS, using the stock game, has no clue about how much DPS he is putting out unless he pulls aggro, at which point he knows only that he's exceeding the tank's aggro.

It shouldn't require add-ons, macros, and theorycrafting fan sites to help a player play better. But it does. I play a Hunter. Without theorycrafting sites I'd have no clue how much Hit Rating I needed to never miss. With those sites I can see from WWS logs that I have entire raids where I never missed. That's literally thousands of shots without a single miss. This is the kind of feedback the game should provide without add-ons and log parsers. But at least the WoW designers made it friendly for third party developers to integrate those add-ons and other tools into the game.

As a lvl 70 Warlock, i can out DPS a few of the lvl80 Mages in my guild (per damage meters) and I can strip Maroes or Curator right off our NAXX cleared lvl80 TAnk if I REALLY open up. I do no research, all i do is raid with my buddies and go with what makes fights end quicker. I also OWN most arena tanks after they pop their trinkets, and woe to the pally that forgets to cleanse him/herself. AND YES--I'm A CASUAL PLAYER.

I think a lot of it goes with them not having to pay attention to anything other than big numbers coming up on their screen, If you're a healer, you need to manage mana,health bars, etc. But of course now with cataclysm and wrath expos we did get new content where they needed to dodge fires, so it's okay~